Deck soft spot repair with gorilla glue

[floppydisk]

@brettn, how did the repair turn out? Did you ever get back on the board and sail it much afterwards? I'm dealing w/ a similar amount of softdeck and debating course of action.

Thanks - Mark

[thombiz]

Mark, I sent you a reply thru the message system, but I think it didn't make it thru the system, so I've copied it to here. This is the write-up I did for the board I extracted the water from: http://www.iwindsurf.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=222906&sid=4bb154019aa418bf7334ebbd44b0f7d8#222906

Having water in the board but no soft spots is one thing, but having crushed styrofoam and water is a whole tougher problem to solve. To fix the crushed styrofoam with water requires that you make an opening in the deck of the board big enough to get your hand/arm into and hand extract the crushed/wet styrofoam. You dig out the crushed and wet foam until all crushed is removed. then put the board is a place like an attic for a week or so with the deck down and let the air come and go thru the board as the air warms during the daytime and cools at night drying out the foam as the air expands and contracts with the heat changes in the attic. Once the foam is dry, I use 2-part 2 lb. density expanding urethane foam (I get from US Composites in Florida) to pour new foam where the styrofoam is missing. This foam expands to about 15 times it's liquid volume . The foam will expand inside the board and out the access hole you created to remove the crushed styrofoam. Use an air angle grinder to grind the excess to the original profile of the styrofoam then patch the access hole and finish to match surrounding deck. This process has a number of tricks that make it work and it is hard to explain. if you decide you want to go there, get back to me and I will figure out how to walk you thru the process.
One of the things to keep in mind when vacuuming a board is the water is denser than air so it always want to move down. In your picture of your vacuum setup the water will try to move to the bottom of the board. Turn the board upside down so the water will want to move towards the vent plug. When I run a vacuum on a board, I always do it outside in the sun and have the board wrapped in a black leaf bag to induce heat to the board. The heat will create a warm air bubble inside the board and force the water toward the lowest portion of the the board....in this case the vent plug.

[floppydisk]

Thombiz - thanks for the reply.

I ended up deciding not to deal w/ the board and a local repair guy will fix it up. Not quite the way I would've done it, but it will be done much faster.

[thombiz]

OK, your solution may actually be cheaper because you won't have to buy all the materials needed which could be costly. It's much cheaper if you already have the materials left over from previous projects.